NearScrub is designed, built, and maintained by a single independent developer, as one of the six Near tools — a small, privacy-first product family. There is no analytics team and no data warehouse behind it. The whole premise is that your files never need to leave your device, and the product is built so they can’t.
A free, browser-based metadata remover. It strips hidden EXIF/GPS data from JPEG photos, text and metadata chunks from PNGs, the Info dictionary and XMP metadata from PDFs, and author/company/custom properties from Office documents (docx, xlsx, pptx). Before cleaning, it shows a per-file report of what it found, and everything runs on your own device via Web Workers. HEIC photos and videos are not supported yet — we would rather state that limit plainly than pretend otherwise.
Because all processing happens on your device, there are no upload servers and no processing clusters to pay for — serving a static page costs close to nothing, which is what makes a genuinely free tool sustainable. Revenue comes from two transparent sources: ads that load only after you consent, and clearly labeled affiliate links (Amazon Associates, Coupang Partners) that may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Neither source ever touches your files.
“No uploads” is not a line in a policy document; it is enforced by the architecture. The site is static, has no accounts and no file storage, and ships a strict Content-Security-Policy that technically blocks the page from sending your file data anywhere. Our own automated tests confirm that a complete cleaning session makes zero network requests with file content.
NearScrub is one of six tools built on the same principle — your files stay near you: NearPDF (PDF tools), NearIMG (image editing), NearScrub (metadata removal), NearSeal (file encryption), NearBG (background removal), and NearVid (video tools). Every one of them processes files on-device, never on a server.
Email contact@nearscrub.com or use the contact page. For security vulnerability reports, see /.well-known/security.txt.